[Tutor] Should a beginner learn Python 3.x

[Alan Plum]

Ahoy!

On Sa, 2009-11-14 at 20:49 +0000, Stephen Nelson-Smith wrote:
> He's an absolute beginner with no programming experience at all.  I
> think he might be following 'Python Programming for the Absolute
> Beginner", or perhaps some online guides.  Should I advise him to
> stick with 2.6 for a bit, since most of the material out  there will
> be for 2.x?  Or since he's learning from scratch, should he jump
> straight to 3.x  In which case what can you recommend for him to work
> through - I must stress he has absolutely no clue at all about
> programming, no education beyond 16 yrs old, but is keen to learn.

It's too early for Python 3.x.

He should probably learn Python 2.6 for now, possibly with future
imports (though they probably take a bit longer to explain).

3.x will probably cause too many problems for him for now. A lot of the
reference material he can find on the web expects 2.x and many of the
"cool" libraries aren't quite ported to 3.x yet. That's just confusing.

He'll learn about the differences between 2.x and 3.x eventually, but he
shouldn't have to worry about it for the time being.


Cheers

Alan